


Coffee at 221B

by lmeden



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-12
Updated: 2010-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/lmeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John wakes up to find that it's suddenly autumn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee at 221B

John wakes up, the pillows tumbling all askew around him, fan whirring steadily beside the bed, his arms gone numb with cold, and realizes that the year has turned to autumn.

The night before it had been so hot that John had decided that sleeping in the living room (an altogether larger, lower in elevation, and thus cooler room than his own bedroom) was a good idea; admittedly he would have slept in the Thames itself if he'd believed he wouldn't have drowned or been poisoned by detritus. But that would have been foolish, and just a fancy anyway, so in compromise he had run down to the store, bought up a small rotating fan, set it to blow up and down the sofa, and then fallen promptly asleep there.

And it had worked. John had fallen asleep cool and happy, and stayed that way. Until now. It seemed that sometime in the night, the weather had turned and cooled down drastically. Cold air seeped through the cracked sealing around the windows and doors, and right onto the sofa where John slept. It was autumn now.

Quickly he rolls over and off the couch, rubbing his hands over his freezing arms. He had worn only boxers and a cotton t-shirt to bed, and he's nearly teeth-chatteringly cold now. And with no blankets in sight, damn it all. He needs coffee, and he needs it now. Blearily, John stands and catches his foot on a pillow. It slips under him and he almost falls, but he catches himself and pushes back up. "Fuck," he whispers under his breath, before heading off towards the kitchen.

It feels as if everything on John's body is shrinking and turning in on itself with the cold. And the thing is, John knows logically that it is _not that cold_. It was just that it had been a terribly sticky, sweltering summer. The type of summer that one swears he is melting during. After that, John suspects that this first taste of cooler weather may be sending him into shock.

He glances around, glaring at a shut door on the other side of the flat as he reaches the kitchen. The door is firmly closed, and John knows that if he goes over to try it, he'll find it locked as well. It is Sherlock's room. John sees Sherlock's bedroom like this sometimes, all locked up and closed. He thinks that Sherlock must be sleeping, but why the man feels the need to lock himself away as if anyone seeing him unconscious would signal the end of the world is beyond John.

Of course, everything about Sherlock is beyond John.

In the kitchen, he pulls his hands away from his arms and pushes piles of papers aside to clear a small space of the counter. He squints. Some of the papers appear to be police reports, undoubtedly stolen, and complete with bloody crime scene photos. It's too early for that sort of thing, so John pulls a folder over the blood.

He spies a mug on the counter and reaches for it, sighing in relief when he finds only dust inside. He goes to the sink to rinse it out and discovers a cache of severed fingers, sealed in individual sandwich bags, collected in the drain like discarded vegetables. Sighing, John rinses out the cup, glad that the digits are sealed away. The dusty water rinses over the bagged fingers and down the drain.

He turns away to retrieve the coffee. The cabinet above the coffeemaker holds a jar of ground coffee that John bought several weeks ago, poured into a bag and hid in a mouse-chewed Lucky Charms box so that Sherlock wouldn't supplement his nicotine usage with even more caffeine and doubtlessly go completely mad on the cocktail. He suspects that Sherlock knows about the deception, but the man hasn't said anything, so John just continues on. He measures the grinds and water out and pours both into the coffee maker, then walks over to the refrigerator to retrieve the coffeepot.

The week before, he had hidden the coffeepot on top of the appliance, behind several dead and dying plants placed there by Mrs Hudson some months ago. John had decided that he should hide the pot as, one morning weeks ago, he had gone to make coffee and found the interior of the pot coated with a thin film of bright blood, sitting on the countertop as if someone had just poured themselves a cuppa. It had taken him a half hour to wash and cleanse the thing properly, and he had decided that hiding the pot was most likely the intelligent thing to do.

As he pulls the glass pot down, John notices that it seems heavy, unusually so. Already convinced that something is wrong, he pulls the pot into the morning sunlight. And sighs.

The coffeepot is covered by clear plastic wrap, which seals it completely shut. Inside lies a dead rat, balanced on its back with short legs sticking straight up into the air, its claws grasping at nothing. John purses his lips. The pot is really ruined, now. The rat's little balancing act slips and it slips across the bottom of the pot. Its claws scrape down the side of the container with a shriek. John swallows and places the pot onto a stack of papers, in the sun. He'll have to remember to throw it out, damn whatever experiment Sherlock is running.

Looking over at the coffeemaker, John can see that not all is lost. He can simply place his mug beneath the little spout and let the coffee drip down. He doesn't need the pot after all. So he goes over to the device, carefully positions his mug, and switches it on. Now for the cream and sugar, for on a morning like this he'll be damned if he doesn't indulge in some cream and sugar, at least.

He walks to the refrigerator again, and pulls the door open. He's going to have to start cleaning around here soon, he knows it, because the door sticks, and he's forced to yank violently to open it. Without looking, he snatches the cream from the cool interior and shuts the door. He doesn't want to know.

The cream looks alright at first glance, but as John crosses the kitchen again and opens the carton, he know that it's gone off. The smell of it is like having a fungus sprout legs and begin to climb down the back of your throat, and John gags slightly at his first whiff of it. It seems he'll have to have his coffee with only sugar this morning. Turning his head to the side and not breathing, he dumps the cream into the sink. And then curses, _fuck_ , as he realizes that the fingers are still sitting there in their little bags. He tosses the carton onto the counter and quickly attempts to pick them out of the sink, to safety, brushing the chunks of curdled milk aside. Then he runs the water over them, to get rid of the smell. He leaves them spread out on the counter to dry.

John stops, looks at the percolating coffee, almost finished now, and takes a deep breath. This has turned out to be a more complicated affair than expected. Like everything involving in this flat, he thinks sourly.

Only the sugar is left, now. He reaches for the large jar on the counter, and grabs a spoon from a drawer. Luckily, everything seems fine here. No dead field mice buried in the white grains, or snakes climbing around and over the silverware. Carefully he picks the full mug off the hot plate and sets it on the counter. He spoons up a quantity of sugar and pours it in the coffee. Stirs.

Then stops. Warily, John leans down, examining the coffee. The sugar hasn't dissolved right. It isn't sitting on the bottom as sugar usually does. It doesn't require stirring at all. This sugar simply fell into the brown liquid and…disappeared. John pulls the spoon out and lays it on the counter. Brown liquid pools around it. Seems normal.

He crouches, eyeing the coffee from only inches away. He knows better than to take chances in this flat, with Sherlock Holmes so nearby. _Perhaps_ , he thinks, and takes in a deep breath, trying to smell the coffee critically. And then he jerks back.

That bitter smell. He's smelled it only once or twice before, but knows it directly. Cyanide. John stares at the jar of white stuff, the jar that should be filled with sugar. Instead, it seems to be filled with crystallized cyanide. He dumps his coffee into the sink. Now he'll have to find a new mug, and start again.

But before he does so, he picks up the jar of cyanide, sets the faucet running, and begins dumping the poison down the drain. He doesn't think it will hurt anyone down the line. Not after sanitation treatments.

In the middle of this, he hears a shuffle behind him and glances over his shoulder. Standing in the kitchen doorway is Sherlock. He looks inordinately pale, his dark curls haphazardly surrounding his head, mussed by sleep. John doesn't think he's ever seen the other man this way.

"Goddammit, John, you've ruined _everything_ ," he proclaims, watching as John pours nearly a liter of sodium cyanide down the drain, at the severed fingers sitting damp in their bags on the counter, because both milk and water had seeped in when they were drenched; looking at the coffeepot now sitting in the sun, the dead rat fallen out of position and beginning to fester in the bright morning light.

Sherlock looks, to John's mind, what he would call on any other person distressed. His eyes are wide and fixed on his ruined experiment, his gaze skittering about the kitchen, never settling on one thing for more that an instant as if, were he to stare at something for longer than a moment, the reality of its ruination might him home.

Suddenly, he straightens, and his gazes fixes on the jar in John's hands, which John has stopped pouring into the sink and is now bracing on the counter, as he waits for Sherlock's outburst or breakdown or whatever is coming next. Quickly he jumps forward, and as John flinches back he snatches the jar away and hold it close to his chest. Then, favoring John with a withering glare, and seeming much more awake anyway, he turns and stalks back to his room, kicking the door closed behind him with a _slam._

John just watches him go, glad that Sherlock has taken the cyanide off his hands. He really hadn't wanted to deal with it in the first place. And it should be safe with Sherlock. The man may be supremely melodramatic, but John doesn't think he's going to simply pour the stuff down his own throat. Someone else's throat, if at all, or perhaps Sherlock is building up a resistance, like a spy. John could imagine that. He smiles slightly before slumping against the counter with a sigh.

He still needs to make some coffee. This time, he doesn't even bother looking around the kitchen. He simply heads out, back to his bedroom, for some clothes. He's going to go out and pick some up. And maybe have a normal conversation, with a perfect stranger, for one.


End file.
